Auditory Cue Suppresses Visual Detection in Extreme-Periphery

Several studies found cross-modal cueing can enhance perceptual tasks; visual stimulus, for example, can be better detected with auditory cue than without it. Most studies, however, focused on a target within foveal or peripheral visual field (e.g., 20°–50° eccentricity). Neurological and behavioral studies showed auditory can complement visual perception in the periphery, but such cross-modal cueing in the extreme-periphery has been unexplored. In the present study, participants detected a dot appeared randomly in either left/right extreme-periphery (from 60°to 90°, with 5° distance). In a half of the trials, the dot was presented with a simultaneous beep as an auditory cue. The results counterintuitively indicated that auditory cue significantly decreased the visual detection in the extreme-periphery. Further pilot study implied auditory cue may be more reckoned on with widespread visual attention and produced false alarms, resulting decreased sensitivity in the extreme-periphery

Falling Pitch Imitating Doppler Shift Facilitates Detection of Visual Motion in The Extreme-Periphery

Previous studies demonstrated that concurrent auditory stimuli can bias visual motion perception in the periphery more than in the fovea (e.g., Takeshima & Gyoba, 2013), and auditory becomes crucial when reliability of vision is reduced (e.g., Schmiedchen et al., 2012). We investigated if auditory affects detecting extreme-peripheral visual motion from behind, which is possibly one of the most salient situations since visual ambiguity is very high and detecting such motion can be ecologically critical to survive. In the experiment, a sequence of three 204 ms dots (255 ms SOA) was presented in the extreme-periphery (individually set by the largest eccentricity with 75% detection); each dot was presented at 3 adjacent locations with 2° distance so as to have apparent motion forward, or at the same location. As auditory stimuli, we employed concurrent beep with falling pitch, which roughly imitated Doppler pitch shift for passing-by object. We employed concurrent beep with rising pitch as a control, in addition to another no sound control. The results showed the concurrent beep with falling pitch increased the hit rate for motion detection, relative to that with no sound and rising pitch beep. Underlying mechanism was discussed with signal detection analysis

Auditory Cue Suppresses Visual Detection in Extreme-Periphery

Several studies found cross-modal cueing can enhance perceptual tasks; visual stimulus, for example, can be better detected with auditory cue than without it. Most studies, however, focused on a target within foveal or peripheral visual field (e.g., 20°–50° eccentricity). Neurological and behavioral studies showed auditory can complement visual perception in the periphery, but such cross-modal cueing in the extreme-periphery has been unexplored. In the present study, participants detected a dot appeared randomly in either left/right extreme-periphery (from 60°to 90°, with 5° distance). In a half of the trials, the dot was presented with a simultaneous beep as an auditory cue. The results counterintuitively indicated that auditory cue significantly decreased the visual detection in the extreme-periphery. Further pilot study implied auditory cue may be more reckoned on with widespread visual attention and produced false alarms, resulting decreased sensitivity in the extreme-periphery

Another look at category effects on colour perception and their left hemispheric lateralisation: no evidence from a colour identification task

The present study aimed to replicate category effects on colour perception and their lateralisation to the left cerebral hemisphere (LH). Previous evidence for lateralisation of colour category effects has been obtained with tasks where a differently coloured target was searched within a display and participants reported the lateral location of the target. However, a left/right spatial judgment may yield LH-laterality effects per se. Thus, we employed an identification task that does not require a spatial judgment and used the same colour set that previously revealed LH-lateralised category effects. The identification task was better performed with between-category colours than with within-category task both in terms of accuracy and latency, but such category effects were bilateral or RH-lateralised, and no evidence was found for LH-laterality effects. The accuracy scores, moreover, indicated that the category effects derived from low sensitivities for within-blue colours and did not reflect the effects of categorical structures on colour perception. Furthermore, the classic "category effects" were observed in participants\u27 response biases, instead of sensitivities. The present results argue against both the LH-lateralised category effects on colour perception and the existence of colour category effects per se

A delayed discrimination task yields categorical perception of color not only in the right but also in the left visual field

Photograph of crossbedding in De Chelly sandstone, Monument uplift, Arizona, 1914. Photo 920 from Herbert E. Gregory Book 7: Navajo, 1913, 1914